From a photograph of Earth taken by an astronaut orbiting in space to a lonely comet to Saturn's largest moons to a distant galaxy affected by a collision a billion years ago, enjoy the wonders of our universe. Plus, scientists have confirmed the existence of and imaged a companion star to Betelgeuse.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/CICLOPS
Monday, 28 July 2025
Saturn's largest and second-largest moons, Titan and Rhea, appear to be stacked on top of each other in this true-color scene from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
The north polar hood can be seen on Titan (5,150 kilometers across), appearing as a detached layer at the top of the moon, located on the top right. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Rhea (1528 kilometers across). North on Rhea is up and rotated 35 degrees to the right.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera on June 16, 2011.
Credit: ESA/ Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA
Tuesday, 29 July 2025
It may look like a lonely mountain, but this landscape is out of this world, literally. It’s one of the closest color images ever taken of the surface of a comet. The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft took this close-up of the tortured and jagged surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of just 29 kilometers.
Comet 67P is a four-kilometer-wide frozen mountain of rock and ice, hurtling through space on a long six-and-a-half-year orbit around the Sun.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI);
Acknowledgment: S. Smartt (Institute of Astronomy) and D. Richstone (U. Michigan)
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
A collision between two galaxies has resulted in a merged star system with an unusual appearance and bizarre internal motions. Messier 64 (M64) features a spectacular dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, giving rise to its nicknames, the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy.
Fine details of the dark band are revealed in this image of the central portion of M64 obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. M64 is well known among amateur astronomers because of its appearance in small telescopes. It was first cataloged in the 18th century by the French astronomer Messier. Located in the northern constellation Coma Berenices, M64 resides roughly 17 million light-years from Earth.
At first glance, M64 appears to be a fairly regular pinwheel-shaped spiral galaxy. As in the majority of galaxies, all of the stars in M64 are rotating in the same direction, clockwise as seen in the Hubble image. However, detailed studies in the 1990s led to the remarkable discovery that the interstellar gas in the outer regions of M64 rotates in the opposite direction from the gas and stars in the inner regions.
Active star formation is occurring in the shear region where oppositely rotating gases collide, are compressed, and contract. Particularly noticeable in the image are hot, blue young stars that have just formed, along with pink clouds of glowing hydrogen gas that fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light from newly formed stars.
Astronomers believe that the oppositely rotating gas arose when M64 absorbed a satellite galaxy that collided with it, perhaps more than one billion years ago. This small galaxy has now been almost completely destroyed, but signs of the collision persist in the backward motion of gas at the outer edge of M64.
This image of M64 was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). The color image is a composite prepared by the Hubble Heritage Team from pictures taken through four different color filters. These filters isolate blue and near-infrared light, along with red light emitted by hydrogen atoms and green light from Strömgren y.
Credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Thursday, 31 July 2025
Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo, taken from the International Space Station during his year-long space mission, to social media on July 19, 2015, with the caption, "Day 114. #Moon #Venus #Jupiter...#Earth".
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
Friday, 1 August 2025
Using the NASA-NSF-funded ‘Alopeke instrument on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse. This discovery answers the millennia-old question of why this famous star experiences a roughly six-year-long periodic change in its brightness, and provides insight into the physical mechanisms behind other variable red supergiants. The companion star appears blue here because, based on the team’s analysis, it is likely an A- or B-type star, both of which are blue-white due to their high temperatures.
‘Alopeke is funded by the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research Program (NN-EXPLORE).
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